Here it is, Halloween, and I’m feeling safe, but it wasn’t always this way. I mean, I’m not one to believe in ghosts; hauntings were never my thing. But something happened, something I can’t explain.
It was 2021, and I was binge-watching Petticoat Junction when my screen went white. A low, unearthly hum filled the room. I heard an eerie voice say, “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission…” and then it appeared-a ghostly apparition on my TV screen. It hovered right on the screen for a few minutes, its edges flickering with static, as if the signal itself was rotting flesh. The room felt cold, so cold the blood in my veins came to a stop. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. The flirtatious Billie Jo returned, and all was well.
But each successive Halloween the same thing would happen, only worse. The apparition appeared ghoulish, with an ashen, sunken, and almost skinless face, skin stretched so thin the face looked vacuum-sealed over bone. Hollow eyes glowed like dying embers in a skull. He looked like the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt.
At times, the apparition would float from place to place for no apparent reason, passing through the screen into the room itself. I’d catch it in the corner of my eye, drifting behind the couch, leaving a trail of cold vapor that smelled faintly of mothballs and government offices.
It spoke in a guttural, mumbling way in words not recognizable to me, but sometimes I swore I heard fragments, each syllable stretched and warped, like a tape playing the Beatles’ “Revolution 9” backward, repeating the phrase “Number nine” sounding like “Turn me on, dead man”. The words haunted me but are gone tonight.
I conducted research with local paranormal experts, and they informed me that many people have seen the same ghost-like apparition. At least I wasn’t alone. The experts called it “BIDEN.” It was the scariest four years of my life.
Note: At the suggestion of a reader on my FB page, I’ve added an alternate title.